$1 Billion Well Spent? - page 3

An Interview with Big Blue's New Linux Boss

April 24, 2003

By
Robert McMillan

LP: Are your customers concerned about this SCO lawsuit?

Stallings: No, we haven't seen any evidence that customers are
concerned about making a decision against IBM or counter to any
proposal they have on the table from IBM. We talk to our customers on
a regular basis. They know what's in the newspaper. I can't comment on
the lawsuit itself, but the market certainly hasn't slowed down, from
what I can see, because of any lawsuit.

From a sales standpoint, we certainly haven't seen anything. As a
matter of fact, customers--the ones that are reading and listening
and understand it--they are more enthused by the opportunity. It has
brought a lot of things to light. People are more educated, and an
educated customer... we haven't seen anything in the marketplace
that's negative.

LP: Do you think this will have any impact on the UnitedLinux effort?
There has been speculation that this lawsuit might cause SCO and SuSE
to split over the UnitedLinux (UL) effort. That could have an effect
on IBM.

Stallings: The whole beauty of this Linux distribution strategy is
that you have as few versions of it in the market as possible, so that
you don't conflict your customer or confuse your customer, and they
have to have all kinds of support strategies around multiple
versions. That was the genesis of this idea of UnitedLinux. And
they've got a construct at UnitedLinux so that distributors can join
UL, or they can go out on their own. There is plenty of opportunity to
support both of those.

The good news is that if any one of the distributors dropped out of
UnitedLinux, it's still UL 1.0, or whatever version they're shipping
at the time. So customer should feel good, that "I'm going to get this
release from UL, and it's consistent, no matter who I get it from."

LP: Wouldn't it be easier, though, if there was some community-defined
standard that was actually respected by the ISVs? Something like the
Linux Standards Base.

Stallings: I think that's what's happening. UL and their partners and
Red Hat talk all the time, and everybody galvanizes around the
kernel. Now there's work going on in 2.5 to eventually get to 2.6, and
that's the rallying point. I don't know who the company or group of
companies would be to decide, "OK. This is a standard." The good news
is the community forces a standard.

The downside of that is that it probably doesn't move as fast and it's
probably not as clear as most people who cover the industry would like
it, because it's so different from the proprietary method.

LP: But there is the Free Standards Group effort, which includes the
Linux Standards Base. They've been trying for years to make a
distribution-neutral Linux standard, but the market seems so far ahead
of the LSB that there has been a necessity to have standards like
United Linux. It's always seemed to me that this is a place where IBM
could play an important role in bringing the LSB standard to the point
where it was meaningful to customers and ISVs. Then you wouldn't have
to worry about UnitedLinux or Red Hat being the standard. I'm not
sure, though, whether IBM really has the will to do that, or if you
feel that this United Linux/Red Hat dual approach is good enough.

Stallings: I think it good enough. The great news is that they're all
working together and we work with them. Again, this isn't something we
could control. Even if your thought was something we wanted to take
on, that would be out of character with the right way to participate
in the community.

It may move slower than a lot of people want, but the good news is
that when we get there, everybody's bought in. Everybody knows what's
in the standard. And by the way, there's plenty of work to be done in
the meantime with customers just adopting the current versions of
Linux that are out there. We're all swamped with business and
opportunities and customers. We've just got to let it evolve. And we
think that's the best way to do it. That's our commitment to the
industry. I think that surprised a lot of people, like maybe yourself
and some others that have watched IBM over the years, but look how
it's grown.

Just like everybody's reacted to this SCO suit--everybody's got an
opinion, particularly in the open source community--I think if
anybody tries to stake out a claim that my version is better than the
other, the market will react to that. So we think it's best to let it
evolve. Let the customer decide.

LP: What are IBM's major goals for Linux in the next few years?

Stallings: Well the biggest thing is applications. Working with the
ISVs and partners and customers to get their applications onto
Linux. It's a lot of work. We've got the servers enabled. The vendors
in the market have got Linux to run, but the next wave of this is when
we've got tens of thousands of applications--particularly for the
small-to-medium-sized businesses that run on Linux, so that companies
can make decisions quickly and get it implemented quickly and know
that it works.